Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Remember the post last week about Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann and his inability to say that if a foreign government subjected an American soldier to waterboarding then it would be torture? That statement provoked a reaction of disgust from Sen. Lindsay Graham, a former JAG officer, and now it has provoked a resignation from a current JAG officer, Andrew Williams. He explained his resignation in a letter to his local paper, which I will reproduce below the fold:
It was with sadness that I signed my name this grey morning to a letter resigning my commission in the U.S. Navy.There was a time when I served with pride, knowing that by serving with the finest men and women in the country, we were part of an organization whose core values required us to "do the right thing," and that we were far different from the Soviet Union and its gulags, the Vietcong with their torture camps and a society of surveillance and informers like Nazi Germany.
We were part of the shining light on the hill who didn't do those things. Sadly, no more.
The final straw for me was listening to General Hartmann, the highest-ranking military lawyer in charge of the military commissions, testify that he refused to say that waterboarding captured U.S. soldiers by Iranian operatives would be torture.
His testimony had just sold all the soldiers and sailors at risk of capture and subsequent torture down the river. Indeed, he would not rule out waterboarding as torture when done by the United States and indeed felt evidence obtained by such methods could be used in future trials.
Thank you, General Hartmann, for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition.
In the middle ages, the Inquisition called waterboarding "toca" and used it with great success. In colonial times, it was used by the Dutch East India Company during the Amboyna Massacre of 1623.
Waterboarding was used by the Nazi Gestapo and the feared Japanese Kempeitai. In World War II, our grandfathers had the wisdom to convict Japanese Officer Yukio Asano of waterboarding and other torture practices in 1947, giving him 15 years hard labor.
Waterboarding was practiced by the Khmer Rouge at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Most recently, the U.S. Army court martialed a soldier for the practice in 1968 during the Vietnam conflict.
General Hartmann, following orders was not an excuse for anyone put on trial in Nuremberg, and it will not be an excuse for you or your superiors, either.
Despite the CIA and the administration attempting to cover up the practice by destroying interrogation tapes, in direct violation of a court order, and congressional requests, the truth about torture, illegal spying on Americans and secret renditions is coming out.
Andrew Williams, Gig Harbor
What possible answer is there for this? I see none. The pedestrian conservatives, the ones who view political issues as purely an Us vs Them game, will do what they always do - apply the label "liberal" to the argument and pretend that they've therefore defeated it. But the more principled conservatives and military officers take this position, the more absurd that argument becomes.
Comments
Is there a link to the letter in the paper?
Where there is one person of principle, more are hiding. I hope.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | January 2, 2008 9:39 AM
Andrew Williams is a camel with a very strong back, and just enough cajones to publish a very fine resignation letter in a very poor venue - his local paper?
Posted by: Gingerbaker | January 2, 2008 9:57 AM
Amen. I'd like to see everyone who approved or ordered waterboarding tried for war crimes including John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, Cheney and his gang of yes men and ending with George Bush.
Posted by: ompus | January 2, 2008 10:13 AM
Found it at Knight-Ridder's Military.com.
Not exactly his local paper. Not a press conference set up by an astro-turf group, either.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | January 2, 2008 10:14 AM
Oops. Here:
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,158983,00.html
Posted by: Ed Darrell | January 2, 2008 10:22 AM
JAGs are in a terrible conflict of interest. It's amazing that they don't recognize that. Their client is the Pentagon, not the individual defendants.
If they were in private practice, they'd be ridden out of the bar on a rail.
Posted by: raj | January 2, 2008 10:43 AM
"Their client is the Pentagon, not the individual defendants."
Wrong. Thanks for playing. The Pentagon is their employer, not their client. As their employer, the Pentagon has directed some of them to represent service members and others as clients. This setup is structurally and ethically similar to that of public defenders employed by the state to represent criminal defendants that the state is prosecuting. JAG lawyers sometimes face more practical issues adhering to their ethical obligations as attorneys than public defenders, but there's nothing unethical about the setup itself.
Posted by: AnneS | January 2, 2008 10:54 AM
raj: Was it a conflict of interest when I used to accept Court-appointed clients? After all, the state was both paying my fee and prosecuting the clients.
The first duty is always to Justice, then to your client. I see no reason why JAGs can't do it as well as I did.
Posted by: kehrsam | January 2, 2008 11:01 AM
The local paper is the Penninsula Gateway. Here's the letter and an accompanying story on Williams from the same issue: Local man resigns from U.S. Naval Reserves over CIA tape scandal.
Posted by: jpf | January 2, 2008 11:11 AM
Oops. That second link is the same text as Ed Darrell's link.
Posted by: jpf | January 2, 2008 11:15 AM
Wow...
No matter what this man might think about anything else, you have to like him for speaking out on this subject! That is courage...
Posted by: FossilBob | January 2, 2008 11:18 AM
Gingerbaker:
What better venue than the public eye?
Posted by: Rod | January 2, 2008 12:29 PM
Posted by: Bobby | January 2, 2008 12:36 PM
"Gingerbaker:
What better venue than the public eye?"
-Rod
Well, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, USA Today, etc would have been a more public eye.
The descriptive "local paper" seemed to me to be the least public way to publish, although I suppose he could have sent it to his kid's school newspaper.
Or, he could have left in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet left in an unused storeroom in the basement of the city clerks office behind a door marked "Beware of Leopard". :D
Look, I am happy he wrote what he did - it was eloquent and meaningful. But, by Jove, it took him long enough to stand up and become a man, didn't it? There has been plenty of evidence before Gen. Hartmann didn't say what he should have said, to compel an ethical man to act.
Combine his tardiness with a weak venue for his letter and, in my judgment anyway, his actions pale in comparison to his prose.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | January 2, 2008 1:52 PM
Cf. Ehren Watada, whom we should honor as a war hero.
A real, but overlooked hero in all of this is Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, a JAG who won a case before the US Supreme Court, but was essentially fired for it. In any rational organization, winning a case before the highest court would be a good career move.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Swift
Posted by: Tex | January 2, 2008 5:19 PM
AnneS | January 2, 2008 10:54 AM
The Pentagon is their employer, not their client
Nonsense. The client is the entity that pays their salaries and that controls their promotions. That should have been obvious when the JAG who a couple of years ago won the case against the federal government in the US SupCt was denied the promotion that was rightfully his...because he won the case at the US SupCt.
Posted by: raj | January 2, 2008 6:12 PM
I think the fact that Swift argued against the Bush administration in court and won shows that the Federal government is not his client. That he was then denied a promotion only means that the Bush administration refuses to recognize that they are not his client.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 2, 2008 6:20 PM
There is a difference between the identity of the payor and the client, so much so that there's a whole set of ethical rules designed to deal with that situation. An attorney has the obligation to zealously represent his client in a manner consistent with the law, period, and the rules governing the JAG corps recognize this. The fact that there may be material consequences of that obligation - including pissing off the guy who pays your bills and even risking contempt citations when an irate judge tries to prevent you from creating a record - is just part of the cost of entering the profession. Lt. Commander Swift and many of his JAG colleagues recognize this and have paid the price. The JAG corps has a long tradition of such courage, BTW, dating back at least to World War II.
Posted by: AnneS | January 2, 2008 6:45 PM
Really? 'Cause in the rest of the world, they call that their boss or employer, not the client.
Posted by: Skemono | January 2, 2008 7:19 PM
@raj:
You don't get it, do you, raj?
If it helps, think of the JAG corps as a law firm operating entirely pro bono. Just as the associates within a law firm have their salaries and promotion controlled by the partners of the firm, so the officers in the JAG corps have their salaries and promotions controlled (ultimately) by the Pentagon; that doesn't stop the person to whom the service is delivered being the client.
Oh, and I am a lawyer (albeit not USAan) and have spent most of my career in private practice - much of it doing Legal Aid work, where the (UK) government pays the bills. Please take it from me - you're wrong.
Posted by: Robin Levett | January 3, 2008 5:26 AM
You don't get it, do you, raj?
Actually, I do get it. And, as a USAan lawyer, I understand the conflict of interest. Apparently, you do not. If the JAG corps were analogous to a "public interest law firm," it would be totally independent of the Pentagon. It is not, and that should be obvious.
Your experience with the UK government is totally irrelevant to this issue.
Posted by: raj | January 3, 2008 12:07 PM
@raj:
Would you please put the goalposts back where you found them? That there is a (potential or actual) conflict here is clear - but that wasn't what we were talking about. The issue is your absurd claim that when acting for an individual soldier or Guantanamo prisoner the JAG's client is "the entity that pays their salaries and that controls their promotions", and not the individual whose case he takes on. If you've dropped that claim, fine; but if not, while I'm not going to suggest that you aren't a lawyer, I will question whether you would now pass the ethics paper in a bar exam.
The Manual for Courts-Martial, for example, makes quite clear that the relationship between Counsel acting for an accused before a Court-Martial is an attorney-client relationship.
The relevance of my experience as a Legal Aid lawyer is a simple one - not only was I (as a partner) not my assistant's client by virtue of my power over salaries and promotion, but you don't even have the fall-back weasel that the money which financed the salary paid to the assistant came from the person for whom the firm acted.
Posted by: Robin Levett | January 3, 2008 4:50 PM
Robin Levett wrote:
Funny and correct. I'm going to borrow that phrase if you don't mind. (Well, even if you do, really.)Posted by: James Hanley | January 4, 2008 4:51 PM
@James Hanley:
Help yourself - I claim no originality.
Posted by: Robin Levett | January 4, 2008 7:36 PM